OK so I'm thinking about making the move to Atlanta. Anybody with any opinions on the city please reply. Pros...cons? If I do move here where in the city is most bicycle friendly? Where is good to see live music? Anything I should know about this place?

For me, Atlanta isn't where I want to live. I worked up there for almost a year. My day consisted of up at 6:00 am drive to work and go to gym. Had to do this to beat traffic. Work from 9 - 6. Wait around until 6:45 or 7:00 to drive home. Get home around 7:45 - eat and watch a little TV. So my life pretty much revolved around work.

I now live in Warner Robins, GA which is about 1 1/2 hours south of ATL. I have a 30 minute commute on the bike and I'm very happy here.

Zack

I voted this city sucks. Because Atlanta proper does suck. There are surrounding communities that are quite nice however.

I actually live in Conyers. While it would not be my first choice or recommendation it is not as bad as some areas.

There no such thing as bike friendly anywhere in the city of Atlanta proper.

Decatur is close, only because more bicyclists are around and the motorists are used to seeing them. It's much more of a variety in terms of political affilliations and ethnicity (major college town as well ) so for that reason Decatur is nice. Lots of live music in downtown decatur as well as Chastain Park.

Now if you go outside atlanta, there are some fantastic road rides (Blue ridge mountains up north etc. as well as great mountain bike trails. I also live in Conyers and mountain bike/road ride around there. If you do decide to come down here, you've got samdabikinman and the rest of us to show you some great routes..

I'm in Suwanee right now at my brother's house. I actually applied for a job at the CDC already. Anybody out there hiring a chemist?

Music??
Music Midtown is next weekend.

Suwanee??
Suwanee is so far out there really isn't any good riding in that area.

CDC??
That's on the Emory campus. Lots of folks ride to work at Emory/CDC.
Once you find a job try to live in the same part of town so you can commute by bike. Or at least live where you can find a decent commute route. Traffic around here sucks bigtime!!

There are many good places to ride and there are LOTS of organized/group rides every weekend, some during the week.

Atlanta isn't a bad city if you can get around by bike. If you have to drive make sure you live close to work (<10 miles).
We live 5.3 miles from my wife's work and it takes her 25-30 minutes to drive, park, and get to her department. In the afternoon it takes her 30-40 minutes to get home.

Traffic is really terrible in Atlanta. I live in Buford (about 30 miles outside of the city), which is pretty far out (most people in the city think I live in the sticks). I drive to the Buckhead area for work, which is kinda insane. 45 to 60 min. is the norm fo me.

I wouldn't say Atlanta is necessarily bike friendly. Drivers here are pretty aggressive. However, if your used to handeling yourself on a bike in traffic situations, I think you'd be OK.

They are trying to promote alternative commuting methods now, so hopefully they will increase the number of bike lanes, and paths in the city. As far mountain bike paths, there are some outside the city. There are 2 good ones are really close to my house. And of course there are plenty in north Georgia.

All in all Atlanta is pretty cool. If you like jazz, go to Dante's Down the Hatch. Piedmont park is pretty good. There are plenty of venues for music of all kinds. The weather here is awesome. Especially right now. Winters are relatively warm and brief, but the summers can be hot (hey, it is Georgia after all). Air quality can be bad sometimes between the pollution and the pollen.

That's pretty much all the basics.

Good Luck

I moved to Stone Mountain (an Atlanta suburban town) almost 30 years ago as a teenager. Atlanta has grown quite a bit since then.

If anything, I'd say Atlanta is a great place to live (even though, as someone who lives here, I love to criticize it.) Atlanta is the main economic engine of the American southeast region, so it has it's positives and negatives. But I think you might like it if you moved here. Heck, join the club--it seems like everyone and his brother is moving here!

I have found commuting by bike from Stone mountain to Atlanta, a 28 mile round trip, to be quite enjoyable, if you know how to handle all types of roads and traffic. But there is lots of room for improvement.

The closer you get to the Atlanta city limit, the older the neighborhoods are, which usually means better alternate routes for cycling. I really don't think Atlanta is a bad place to ride if you are an experienced commuter.

But if you're looking for a sleepy southern town, Atlanta's not it, though I've heard people from New York complain that there is not enough to do--New York is called the "city that never sleeps" because there is something happening 24 hours a day.

I guess that's one thing that makes us different--we sleep!

(I think you'll like it. It's got the opportunities of a big city with some of the benefits of slower-paced town. There are many kinds of people in Atlanta, so you have many points of view.)

Well I'm still here. The jobsearch is really going quite well and I'm learning to like the hills out here. So after a nice twenty five miler tonight I'm kicking back about to fall asleep while watching the T.V. when behold out of the corner of my eye I see the biggest freaking spider that I've ever seen outside of the zoo! Now, you people that are familiar with the fauna in the Atlanta area have to tell me if this thing was dangerous to humans. Right now I feel like the crocodile hunter. It took three beers to go through with it, but I finally managed to capture it and return it to the wild. I even managed to take a few pictures of it in the process. FYI the coin that you see is a quarter. The spiders in Cincinnati were MONSTERS if they made it the size of dime. I think I'm sleeping with the lights on tonight.

Hard to tell because of the lighting but it looks like a brown recluse spider. (the adult is usually light tan to brown in color) When it bites you, you don't feel it, but two days later you form a necrotizing wound that is very hard to heal (It secretes a digestive enzyme that slowly dissolves skin tissue. ) This particular one looks slighlty different from most brown recluses so I may be wrong, but georgia is one of the states where it is commonly found.

Tee hee hee.

Welcome to Georgia!

Aw come on Pete, someone is always doing stuff 24 hours a day in Atlanta. It's just that they do not want the police to see them doing it.

You're right Sam.
I live about 1.2 miles from I-285 and the locals are driving like maniacs on I-285 all hours of the day and night. Sometimes the roar of the traffic wakes me up at 2 a.m. And I've got the bedroom windows closed. :irritated

So all the money spent on interstate sound barriers was a waste of taxpayers money.

Sorry you have to deal with that Ron. Our neighborhood has several harley owners who buzz in and out at night that wake me up.

I rather enjoy the white work vans that pass you on the right at a cool pace of 85+MPH. I forgot to add that blinkers obviously don't come standard on most cars bought in Atlanta. I just had to add my comment on what I see everyday to and from work. I have already accepted the fact that I will not live a full life due to other drivers in this city. :irritated

Having lived in Chicago, it's not the drivers that scare me. I can handle the idiots on the road. It's the monstrous spiders that have me scared. Are there any other critters down here that I should know about? Hey Ron H. the company that I might get a job with is in Decatur...if I get a job with them I'll probably move down there. We may be neighbors in the not so distant future.

Decatur is often times one of the places where we start rides in to Atlanta by paralleling the Marta line. There is also the "Decatur Death Ride" -- a must do event.

Anyway, Atlanta is a big urban city.... so like all big urban cities it does have its warts. Discourteous drivers, congestion on the main arteries during peak traffic hours and when ever there is construction, rain or an accident -- the latter almost always accompanying the two former conditions. However, as big as it is, the traffic is not nearly as bad as Los Angeles or Chicago. What is perplexing are some of the driver habits -- such as insanely fast traffic flow speeds (75-80ph common in 55 - 65mph zones) and the occasional ultra-speed freak snaking through traffic at 90+ with 2 or three idiots trailing behind under the premise that the lead car will get the ticket.

There's an old joke about Atlanta's vehicle speeds on the highways that goes something like this, "A guy flys into Atlanta and hops on the 285 loop to get to the North side of town and is immediately overwhelmed by the speed of the traffic as it screams past him even though he's 10mph over the speed limit. Like many 1st timers to Atlanta he misses his exit and decides to pull off the "Loop" to get directions at a gas station. When he pulls in to the station, four guys run out to his car, jack it up, change the tires, fuel it up and throw him a bottle of Gatoraide and tell him -- don't worry, you'll get the hang of this thing in a few more laps".

Anyway, back to cycling and Atlanta, I've lived here since '91 and believe the cycling opportunties are as good and plentiful as any major city in the US. You can ride in-town on Sundays with relative ease and there are some very challenging inside-the-loop rides on the North side of town -- the Airport Ride is the racer-boys Sunday ride and the Buckhead Bellyache is one of the most popular weeknight rides. However, in-town riding is not the place to "learn" how to ride. Urban cycling demands sharp bike handling skills, fast reaction time and an intense amount of attention and metal alertness. Therefore, beginners and intermediates should look to hone their skills by hooking up with an existing organized ride group -- inside or outside the loop. The Atlanta Cycling bike shops all have weekend rides that cover in-town residential areas, e.g., The Vinings Loop through Buckhead, the Brookhaven Ride, the Sandy Springs ride, etc.... Keep in mind, many of the in-town rides around Atlanta are quite challenging as Atlanta has more than its fair share of hills. We've hit 53mph coming down Northside Drive on our tandems.

Outside the loop you'll find that almost every major suburban area -- Marietta, Roswell, Gwinnett, Peachtree City, Tucker & Covington -- has at least one major weekend and/or weeknight ride.

Off-road single track is available within 30 minutes of Atlanta in several different directions: Yellow River & Conyers Horsepark to the East, Newnan to the Southwest, Blankets Creek to the Northwest and if you're willing to drive an hour or so you can find excellent riding throughout the North Georgia mountains.

For road riding, once you are outside of the 285 loop almost every major city has a loop that head away from town into more rural areas that are also excellent, although urban sprawl is catching up and putting more "family traffic" on these roads. We can easily ride a metric century from our doorstep on a Saturday morning and we'll see a car about once every mile or so on average. Silk Sheets is a popular ride in South Fulton County and, again, you may see a car once every 5 minutes or so over 60 miles of riding. If you're willing to drive an hour or so from downtown the options are even more incredible -- the North Georgia mountains, Rutledge/Social Circle/Madison/Buckhead to the East, Covington to the West, Fayetteville to the South and Cartersville to the Northeast all provide some great routes.

Even though I'm not a fan or user of them, there are some excellent MUPs in Atlanta -- The Atlanta PATH and the Silver Comet Trail.

So, yes, if you want to focus on the negatives associated with large urban areas then Atlanta does indeed suck. However, if you can look past the negatives the positives are plentiful -- even for cyclists.

I've wanted to see a Brown Recluse for years, but never get lucky.
It has a brown fiddle on it's back. But don't be afraid, it's a "reclusive" spider, preferring to keep away from people.

Most of the spiders I've seen are harmless. The biggest one I saw was a beautifully colored spider with a leg span of about two inches. It appeared one morning in the garden, sitting in the middle of it's web, waiting on breakfast. Once I actually walked through one of it's webs, and did I panic! But it scurried off to build another web, since I was too big a sandwich for him to get his mouth around!



I like the hairy ones that stalk their prey like a tiger. I don't think they build webs and they're kind of small, but boy are they cool.

I voted for "sucks" but purely for the traffic. Ignoring that, it's great. Last time I was driving there I was on Ponce De Leon in the left lane with one car in front of me. We were stopped at a light and here comes a MARTA bus passing us by driving into oncoming traffic. Then he wedged in front of the front car at the light. So here he is cutting off an entire lane of traffic, blocking the crosswalk, and one lane of oncoming traffic just to make his route on time. Traffic is bad everywhere though, not just downtown/midtown.

Nobody's mentioned the wood roaches yet (Palmetto bugs to some). They're theser huge flying cockroaches.

I live in the Grayson/Snellville area, just a little north of Pete Clark. The CDC has some sort on complex in Snellville but I'm not sure what it does.

Livingood gave a pretty accurate representation of Atlanta and the surrounding area. I agree with him on most all of his points.

I wonder if the CDC and cockroaches have anything in common. Secret Testing perhaps???

I remember one late tv night in the kitchen about 20 years ago. I cut off the tv. Absolute silence, except what sounded like a mouse munching. I got up and followed the sound.

The source: a Big Guy (not a mouse) munching a trench through a cracker.

Where does one go to get out on the weekends? Live music and beers and single women between 25 and 32?

The Buckhead Triangle (near intersection of Peachtree Street & West Paces Ferry)

American Pie & Frankies on Roswell Road in Sandy Springs

(So I'm told....)

Buckhead, Little Five Points, Piedmont Park, Virginia-Highlands area, Sandy Springs.